Teach Yourself to Photograph Steam

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As { food } bloggers, we paint mental pictures with words and implant memories with photographs.

And nothing paints the picture of cozy, warm and comfortable the way swirling steam does. The visual takes you to laid back afternoons, sipping on hot chai and munching on something deep-fried and crunchy on a cold winter’s day, or a warm mug of pumpkin spice latte surrounded by the glorious colors of fall. To me, it brings back memories of the first monsoon days, a welcome relief after the long and harsh Indian summers.

There are a lot of steam ‘alternatives’ – from incense sticks to even microwaved tampons (don’t ask!), but if you truly want to add this to your photography skill set, work with the real deal, master it, and you can later play around with the alternatives.

The Basics

Use a tripod. This is the one I use. Even if you have the most steady hands on the planet, we are working with boiling water here. Don’t scald yourself trying to be extra awesome.

Get a remote shutter switch for your camera. I got this Bower remote control for Nikon as part of my DSLR bundle, but you can buy a universal remote here. The infrared remote lets you trigger your camera from a distance without actually hitting the shutter button on your camera. To enable this on Nikon, go to your camera Menu -> Shooting Menu -> Release Mode -> Quick response remote -> OK. This little piece of equipment is indispensable for action shots.

Use a dark background to offset the steam. White steam on a white set is not a great strategy here.

The set must be well lit – one primary light source from the side, and one additional light source from the back.

Create your set, props, background and all. Place the subject (steam-free) where you want it to be, check lighting, camera angle, etc. Once the set looks to your satisfaction, put the kettle on to boil. When you see the steam coming off the kettle spout, turn on your camera and set it to shoot remotely. Then introduce the hot liquid to the set and start shooting immediately.

The first few shots are the most intense, but about a minute later, you’ll see the intensity reduce and turn to dancing swirls.

But keep clicking – whenever you see a new stream rise up from the cup, click! Every swirl of steam is almost as unique as a snowflake. Try and get the prettiest one!

Now let’s go look at all that in detail:

Backlighting

To properly photograph steam, you need light to shine through the steam to make it more visible than it normally is. For this, use an additional light (I used one of these table lights)positioned behind the subject(the tea pot here) and aimed above the subject, to where the steam will rise up.

Sidelighting

You’ll also need side-lighting, to illuminate the rest of the set. I wanted my set to be relatively darker, with a lot of shadows, so I used light blockers (a.k.a vinyl tiles from Home Depot, propped up against water bottles and large scented candles at the back) to manipulate the light introduced onto the set. But I still left a gap to light the spout of the kettle (where the steam will come through).

Shoot

Once you have your set ready, introduce the hot liquid to the set, in my case, the entire kettle. You want the water to be extremely hot. Hotter than you can possibly ever drink or touch. Way past boiling. Fuming, more like it. Be careful while handling hot liquids. SUPER careful!

The first couple of shots will have the most intense steam. But after the puffing steam dies out after 30 seconds or so, you’ll see beautiful swirls. Keep clicking, and time your shutter release well to capture the beautiful swirls.

If your steam seems to be dying out (in case of a cup or mug), blowing on top of the mug will get new swirls of steam rising anew.

Editing Tips

No image is complete before editing – here are a few edits to help bring out the steam:

Darken surrounding areas (vignette), particularly the black, to bring out the white in the steam. But don’t over-do it. You want it to still look natural and not overly artificial.

Do not increase detail (clarity) on the image too much – steam is vapor and is more sparse than smoke in nature. Over-sharpening images can make your beautiful steam look grainy or noisy.

Editing trick #1 : Increase steam density

I use Lightroom as my primary editing tool, but I found this neat little trick using PicMonkey – a free online photo editing tool. After you’ve done your usual photo edits with whatever software you normally use, head on over to PicMonkey to finish it off.

To increase the density of your captured steam, upload your image, then go to the Touch Up menu -> Blush Boost -> Select custom color to white, set brush size based on your steam lines, and set Fade to 90% or more -> Start painting!

The above picture was taken purely with a natural backlight and a small white board placed in front of the cup (to the right) to bounce light back onto the cup (no additional artificial sidelight). As you can see, paired with the bright window at the back, the steam did not have a dark background to contrast with. This is where the Blush tool can come in and give a boost to your steam. I just ran the brush over the existing swirls of steam to give it more volume and density.

Don’t over do it though and keep within the boundaries – you only want to augment the steam you’ve already captured beautifully! Don’t try to ‘draw’ your steam from scratch. That’s just cheating! 🙂

Editing trick #2 : Whiten Steam

Depending on the lights you use, or image filters and tints you add later on, your steam may end up looking yellowish. To bring it back to it’s gloriously pristine white, use PicMonkey‘s Teeth Whitening tool.

Adjust the size of the brush to match your steam lines, keep fade at 0 (changing only if necessary) and start brushing! You’ll notice all the yellow turn to white as you move down the picture with the painting tool.

That’s all there is to it! You are now equipped with all you need to know to photograph steam! Go grab your cup of tea or coffee and start clicking! We have memories to paint, people!

Additional Resources

500pxISO – for the more advanced photographers who are experienced with Photoshop. Teaches backlighting in detail + post-processing to combine multiple shots into one.

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you’ll know that whenever I teach myself photography techniques, I post the details, camera settings, important notes and more. Come join me and let’s learn together! And if you ever try to photograph steam based on what you learnt here, be sure to tag me on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, I wanna see what you create!